JU20-8: One Of The Most Unrecognized Heroes In The Bible

“…and Pinchas the son of El‘azar, the son of Aharon, stood before it at that time. They asked, ‘Should we still go out to battle again against our kinsmen the people of Binyamin, or should we stop?’ Adonai answered, ‘Attack, because tomorrow I will hand them over to you.’”-Judges 20:28

I gotta question for you.

Who are some of your favorite Bible heroes?

I’m assuming the usual suspects come to mind such as…

…”Yeshua”, “Moses” and maybe “King David”.

Personally I admire Joseph because I can relate to being completely estranged from my family.

And I can relate to Samson and his fleshly struggles with women and wanting to party with the gentiles.

I also love Abraham because of his courage in heeding God’s call to completely leave his homeland and venture out into new territory the Lord would show him.

However, one of the more unrecognized heroes in the Bible is Phinehas.

Do you remember him?

He was the grandson of Aaron and his great claim to fame was when he took a spear and ran it through a Midianite woman and Hebrew man who were having sex inside the camp of Israel.

His act of killing this couple saved Israel from God’s wrath.

It also put an instant stop to a divine plague that had already killed 24,000 Israelites.

Later on Phinehas acted as a mediator during the time when the 2 1/2 tribes east of the Jordan were accused of treason when they set up some memorial altar.

Fast forward to Judges Chapter 20 and we see that it is Phinehas who is serving as the war priest in this battle to fight Benjamin.

Interestingly like Moses, he had been given an Egyptian name for some reason.

Moses’ Egyptian name was MOSE which was Hebraized to MOSHEH and in modern English we now say MOSES.

Likewise, the Egyptian pronunciation of Phinehas is PE-NEHASI and literally it means “Nubian”…meaning a person who comes from Nubia.

 Nubia is a region along the Nile river and they were quite a dark-skinned people.

So while the literal meaning of Phinehas is “Nubian”, the implied meaning is “the dark skinned one”.

In other words, Phinehas stood out because he had noticeably darker skin compared to his other olive-skinned Hebrew counterparts.

Now one interesting takeaway I’m getting from today’s post is this: 

Do the character traits and qualities we admire in our heroes line up with the Bible and God’s perspective?

Or do they line up with the world’s perspective?

Phinehas was honored by God because he ran a spear through a couple having intercourse.

In fact, it was this cold-blooded act that served as an atonement resulting in the ending of a plague.

Or consider that after the Golden Calf affair, the Levites were applauded for literally killing their brothers for committing idolatry.

These are the types of men the Lord considers righteous…

Someone who is not afraid to “hate his mother” or “hate his father” or even his own spouse if he or she would get in the way of one’s relationship with God.

Yet by contrast, who does the world consider to be their heroes?

The simple answer is anybody who has an obscene amount of money in their possession.

Because let’s face it folks, the world has their own version of the Golden Rule…

And it goes like this: “He who has the most gold rules”.

But they are so hellishly wrong.

Because…

…”what shall it profit a man,
if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul?”

Over and out.